How do agnostics live? (Introduction)

by Mark , Thursday, June 19, 2008, 16:23 (5788 days ago) @ dhw

Part 1 of Reply to dhw post of Monday, June 16, 2008, 08:39 - dhw: "...I think we should stick to your extreme scenario, because it is more clear-cut."
Are you really saying that the others are not completely clear cut? Do you even have to think about whether you would push the man off the bridge? - There are two issues regarding your "more realistic scenario": 
1) how to understand the verse you quote 
2) what I would do - As with much of the Bible, there is a range of interpretation. However, the most widely held view is that the focus of Jesus' command is against retaliation. The context suggests this. St Paul reiterates Jesus' ethical teaching whilst also upholding the right of state authorities to use force in exercising judgement. Furthermore, this is an instance of an assault on oneself, unlike in your scenario. - So what would I do? I'll remove it to the third person, if you don't mind, to discuss what anyone should do in such circumstances. I do believe that it would be right to use all reasonable force to stop such an attack. I am not a total pacifist, and I am not absolutely against the use of force. That was not the position behind my thinking in my own extreme example of whether it would be right to torture a child to save the world. - It may clarify if I combine parts of the two scenarios. Imagine if the only way a man could stop the assault on his wife and daughter were to threaten and begin to rape and kill the assailant's own daughter. It would then be wrong to do so. Even if twenty of the man's daughters were with the assailant, inaccessible, and he could only be called off by being shown by video the same being done to his own daughter, I believe that would be wrong. - Which prompts me to be more specific with my original scenario: do you really believe that the Archbishop of Canterbury would think it right to rape and murder a child in order to save the world? - My original scenario is derived from a scene in Dostoyevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov: 
'Imagine that it is you yourself who are erecting the edifice of human destiny with the aim of making men happy in the end, of giving them peace and contentment at last, but to do that it is absolutely necessary, and indeed quite inevitable, to torture to death only one tiny creature, the little girl who beat her breast with her little fist, and to found the edifice on her unavenged tears ... would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me and do not lie!'
'No, I wouldn't,' Alyosha said softly.
'And can you admit the idea that the people for whom you are building it would agree to accept their happiness at the price of the unjustly shed blood of the little tortured child and having accepted it, to remain for ever happy?'
'No, I can't admit it, Ivan,' Alyosha said suddenly with flashing eyes. - Here, this challenge is from Ivan, an atheist, to Alyosha his brother, a novice Christian monk. The story is most commonly used to knock down the all too easy Christian response to the question of suffering which argues that the good outweighs the evil. The tale is taken to illustrate most starkly the injustice of founding all the good of the world on evil. - There is no doubt that the most powerful objection to the Christian idea of God is the question of evil and suffering. It is therefore interesting that your own reaction to my extreme scenario - your own decision when you are allowed to play God - rather lets God off the hook.